Paint Brushes by Jasper Johns, b.1930

Jasper Johns, b.1930
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Paint Brushes

Original etching with aquatint in black ink. 1967. Signed in pencil. Dated in pencil '67-'69. Numbered in pencil from the edition of 40 (34/40). There were also 9 artist's proof impressions. Printed at the studio of ULAE, New York 1969. Issued in the series: First Etchings, 1969.
Ref: Field - Jasper Johns Prints no 81. ULAE Editions no 58

Superb rich impression with brilliant contrast. On pale cream special handmade wove Auvergne paper. Excellent original condition. Full margins. Sheet: 25 5/8 x 19 3/4ins.
Plate: 17 3/8 x 11 5/8ins. (442x295mm)

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An outstanding example of the brilliantly creative handling of etching in one of Jasper John?s finest early prints. As exhibited at Tate Modern, London, 2000.

Jasper Johns has, without a doubt, been one of the most important, influential and revolutionary figures in American painting of the last 50 years. His style developed from the period of Abstract Expressionism into a free handling which uses both figurative objects and abstract forms to stimulate a completely different concept of representation and reality in the mind and eye of the viewer.

Johns has tended to limit the themes of his art to a small number of extremely recognisable simple images - for example the American Flag, a target, old beer cans or, very famously as here, a traditional ?still-life? observation of paint brushes in an old can of cleaning turps. However he has used the theme in a way that that forces the viewer to look at the objects in a new way. The painterly handling of the strokes of colour in the composition of a flag make it not realistic but perhaps suggest a landscape; the old can of beer becomes a painterly abstract description of light. The arrangement of the old paint brushes seems at first just to continue the traditional ideas of still life, but with a longer, slower look it transforms itself into an abstract arrangement of tones and surfaces which exits quite separately from the initial visual ?representation? of the image.

In many ways Johns continues ideas and concepts first suggested by Surrealism in the 1930?s. Also like so many of the surrealist painters he quickly discovered that the unique combination of texture, line and tone which is inherent in etching aids the idea of subconscious stimulation. He drew his first major etchings in the mid 1960?s, making the actual small editions of the prints in 1969. ?Paint Brushes?, above, was one of the principal studies in this first group of etchings.